Why Apple Music Won't Be a 'Spotify Killer'

I don't think Apple Music will be a Spotify killer. At least at first glance, its feature set doesn't seem compelling enough to pull Spotify devotees over to the dark side. Its social feature, Connect, could be cool—or it could be Ping. Or Twitter Music. Or, heck, the Myspace reboot.

According to Nielsen, I'm not your average music consumer. I actively scour the Internet for new tunes and I never listen to radio (upwards of 90% of Americans listen weekly). I make my own playlists, and I'll try just about any new music service that comes on the market. Much of my social graph is the same—they're either music junkies, tech nuts, or both. Which is why, when Twitter responded to yesterday's Apple Music launch with a resounding 'meh', I had only one thought:

You're not the target.

I don't think Apple Music will be a Spotify killer. At least at first glance, its feature set doesn't seem compelling enough to pull Spotify devotees over to the dark side. Its social feature, Connect, could be cool—or it could be Ping. Or Twitter Music. Or, heck, the Myspace reboot.

The product's emphasis on the human element—likely a hold-over from pre-acquisition Beats—may not be the differentiator it's cracked up to be, either. Its biggest bet here comes from new 24/7 radio station Beats 1, led by former BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe. Lowe is great, but his new one-stop shop radio station will have a hard time competing with the endless degrees of specificity I could find on Spotify, Pandora, or elsewhere.

Moreover, Spotify is already excelling at human curation—and it got there organically. As Chris Taylor mentions, "Apple's chief rival in the music streaming space is king of the human-curated playlist. That's because Spotify actually built a social network, from the bottom up, without any hoopla, without even calling it a social network. Its users just like making playlists. You can find playlists for just about any artist or mood under the sun."

The human component of Apple Music seems to be the brainchild of Jimmy Iovine and Trent Reznor, and that makes sense. They're passionate, and highly atypical, music listeners. Says Matt Rosoff about music's divided audience:

"The people who are really into music already know where to find it and take pride in discovering their own stuff, first. Those who aren't that into music and just want good background tunes probably won't hear that much difference between the experts and the algorithms."

And that's the biggest issue with Apple Music: it's trying to be everything, for everybody. When push comes to shove, though, that means there's room for both Apple Music and Spotify in a healthy music streaming landscape. If Apple Music tells us anything, it's that streaming is here to stay: it's now been vetted by the biggest game in town. As Sony Music CEO Doug Morris said at Midem last week, "My guess is that Apple will promote this like crazy and I think that will have a halo effect on the streaming business."

The strongest argument in favour of Apple Music is its sheer breadth of access: 800 million iTunes accounts is no joke. But that's exactly why it won't kill Spotify—it will force both platforms to differentiate their audiences. Ultimately, Spotify is most successful as a platform for music aficionados. People like me. It already owns that segment, and Apple Music is unlikely to move the needle much over the long-term.

On the flip side, Apple Music has literally hundreds of millions of potential users who don't fall into that camp. For those listeners, I beseech Apple: make it easy. Make it convenient. Downloading Spotify and listening to some advertisements isn't a deal-breaker, so Apple needs to create an intuitive and effortless experience for listening to music. Whether Apple Music has that remains to be seen.

My favourite response to yesterday's announcement came from Rdio, a smaller, sleeker streaming service that I've always loved. Their genius (and brazen) tweet mimics Apple's iconic "Welcome IBM" ad; and even though you can assume the note holds a healthy amount of snark, I think the message rings true:

Rdio (and, once upon a time, Apple) is right: competition is a good thing. The music industry is undergoing massive, fundamental change, and Apple's leap into the fray only makes things more interesting. It doesn't mean that the streaming war is won.